Benefits of a Holistic Assessment

Benefits of a Holistic Assessment

Social workers have to ensure that for every case they handle before taking any action to offer support to the client, it is essential to do a holistic assessment.  A comprehensive assessment is a planned care process that seeks to understand the problem the client is undergoing, his or her personal information, factors that led to the situation, and what he or she has that can be used to offer support for his recovery. Assessment is an essential step for any social worker as it gives guidance on how one will deal with the clients.

With assessment conducted first before the recovery process, it will provide evidence and information that a professional can use to suggest or offer a solution to the victim. Having an evidence-based type of treatment achieves more than when one has no evidence at all. A client’s Assessment must be accurate and touch on the biological, psychological, and social information as these factors depend on each other. If one is not taken care of, it affects the others.

A comprehensive assessment provides better solutions to the problem at hand. It is vital for a social worker to not only focus on the victim during the assessment but also look at other factors surrounding him. The family and living situation of the victim should also be included in the evaluation to give a complete picture of what is affecting the client. And how the people around him or she can help or offer support in his or her recovery process. This paper will focus on the bio-physic-social assessment of a sexually abused and trauma victim.

Part A

The presenting issue

The presetting issue, in this case, is a victim that went through a series of sexual abuse when he was young between the ages of 4-6 years. This experience made the victim get depressed and traumatized over the years. It has adversely affected him because it was his father who abused him. Although this happened a long time ago, the effect of his father’s action is still fresh in his mind, which has changed the way he behaves.

Demographic information

The victim’s name is Brandon. He is a 12-year-old Caucasian boy who resides with his mother.

Current living situation

Brandon lives in a house in a middle-class neighborhood with his mother and her boyfriend.

Birth and development

Brandon is coming from a family of three members that is his father, mother, and him, as he is the only child in his family. The family broke up six years ago when Brandon confessed to his mother about his father abusing him. The mother called the police, and the father was incarcerated from that day. now the mother has another boyfriend that they are living with.

Family member and relationship

The only known members of Brandon’s family are the father, who is the abuser, and he is in jail serving time for his crime. The mother, who is the primary support for Brandon and the newest member of the family that is his mother’s boyfriend, who lives with them.

School and social relationships

Brandon attends school, and for a long time, he has not been able to maintain a proper social life due to his depression and trauma. The experience that he went through as a kid has made him feel rejected and hated by people. Also, it is difficult for him to have a relationship with people due to trust issues and insecurities. He is also violent physically and also uses abusive sexual language on his peers, which makes it difficult for him to, make friends. His aggression has developed a rift between him and his peers, which is a negative factor in his social life.

Health and medical issues

Since the abuse happened to Brandon, he has been having problems with his mental health. The psychological and physical effect the abuse had on him has caused him to be depressed and traumatized over time.  This has affected his behavior as he is aggressive, violent at times, and uses sexual insults on people. The mother says that she had tried to make him see a psychiatrist for some time because of his behavior, but after noticing that the sessions are not effecting any change on him, she stopped taking him. His teachers in school have also seen his changing behavior. They have advised his mother to seek educational or psychological testing to determine what is the problem with the client, which she declined due to fear of getting her son labeled.

Spiritual development

His parents do not attend church a clear indication of spiritual support and development. The lack of spiritual guidance can also be a result of the trauma since the victim has no one else to look up to apart from his mother.

Social, community and recreation activities

As noted before, due to the aggression levels and the abusive state of the client, he has no social life as most of his peers fear him. He also does not have a good relationship with the community around him due to his insecurities of someone else wanting to hurt him. He like watching television and using the internet, which serves as his recreational activities. He is mostly an indoor person who does not like interacting with people.

Client’s strengths, capacities, and resources

The client’s main strength is his dedication and motivation to seek help and recover. This is seen in his previous attempts to attend therapy sessions and his openness to his mother. The main resource that the client has is his mother, who has been there for him all along. With these aspects, then it is possible for him to recover from his state of depression and trauma, which will give him back his life.

Part B

Explain the challenges faced by the client

The client, in this case, faces a lot of challenges, the main one being a victim of sexual abuse that was done by his father when he was young. This is the source of all the challenges that the client faces in his life; for example, the feeling of hate towards other people is a result of the abuse. The client also has a challenge with interacting with his peers in school and his community. This makes him lonely and has no one to talk to, which leads to heightened aggression as he tends to think that people hate him while that is not the case.

The lack of a person to look up to apart from the mother poses a challenge in the issue of having role models who motivate him or a person he can share his problems with. The abuse created a sense of insecurity on the victim to the point that he sleeps with a BB gun under his bed in fear of someone coming into the house to harm him; This has also affected the way he interacts with people in the community.

Analyze how the social environment affects the client

The issue of knowing that there were registered sexual offenders in the area that he resided in affected the client immensely as it heightened his insecurity level as he always felt unsafe in the neighborhood. This is what caused him to sleep with a BB gun under his pillow just in case the incident happens to repeat itself.

Identify which human behavior or social theories may guide your practice with this individual and explain how these theories inform your assessment.

The human social theory that may guide me in helping the client is the systems theory. This theory states that the behavior of a person is influenced by several factors that work together as a system. The client’s home environment, parents, and school might be factors that affect how he behaves. The factors that surround the clients should be assessed to ensure that they are not causes for his behavior.

Explain how you would use this assessment to develop mutually agreed-upon goals to be met to address the presenting issue and challenges faced by the client.

With this assessment, I have most of the vital information about the client and the issues that he has gone through. With these factors, it will be easy for me to develop mutually agreed-upon goals that the client should be able to meet. With the assessment results, it will be easy for us to agree on where to start and the actions that will take place at every step of the treatment plan. It will also give the client a chance to suggest what he would not want to be discussed or mentioned, and this is for the sake of his comfortability and cooperation in the recovery plan.

The assessment has enabled as to not the strengths and weaknesses of the client and the environment that he lives in. It has also indicated the resources that can be used to speed up the recovery process of the client. With knowledge of what the client has been through will enable us to set a schedule of activities that will not expose him to threats or things that might affect his recovery.

Explain how you would use the identified strengths of the client(s) in a treatment plan.

The identified strengths, in this case, are the client’s willingness to get help so that he can recover from the traumatizing experience. I would use this strength to keep him more interested in the recovery process and encourage him every day to ensure that he does not get demoralized as the program continues. This will enable him to recover faster and give him a chance to enjoy life.

Explain how you would use evidence-based practice when working with this client and recommend specific

A conclusive holistic assessment helps gather evidence of the troubles that the client is going through, and that way is easy for one to come up with a suitable recovery plan that will help him. Having conducted an assessment, it makes it easy, and it saves time in situations where you have to recommend the client to another professional. This is because he or she does not have to run an assessment again. After all, he or she can rely on your evidence to offer suitable treatment.

Intervention strategies (skills, knowledge, etc.) to address the presenting issue

I would first ensure that the client feels safe even ii it means relocating him to another area or facility. Ensure that I educate the people he is living with at home, how to handle his case, and how to talk to him. Provide therapy and counseling for the client to help him reduce the levels of stress. Ensure that I provide open space between the client and me to allow for open communication, which will help him recover.

Analyze the ethical issues present in the case. Explain how you will address them

The ethical issue, in this case, is that the client is under the legal age, so it is mandatory for me to always seek permission from his mother before anything.

Describe the issues you will need to address cultural competence.

The victim needs to note that other people in the community are not his enemies, and he should interact with them. He should also stop being abusive to the girls in his school as it affects his social life more.

Conclusion

To create an effective patient recovery plan, a social worker needs to ensure that he or she conducts a complete and accurate assessment. This will help him or her conduct an evidence-based treatment that achieves more results and quick recovery of their patients or clients. Assessment is the pivot of the whole program, and without having a thorough assessment, the plan will not work.